Film Noir By: Bruce Crowther

Author: Bruce Crowther

With the advent of World War II, a new mood of disillusion and foreboding was discernible in a film – a dark quality that derived as much from the characters depicted as from the cinematographer’s art. These films, which included such classics as “Double Indemnity”, “The Woman in the Window” and “Sunset Boulevard”, emerged as a genre when a French film critic referred to them collectively as “film noir”. This book looks at this genre’s literary origins, which were often based on the novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich and how the material translated to the screen, noting in particular influences from German expressionist films and the almost indispensable techniques of flashback and voice-over narration.